24 May 2016

Top ten genres I feel different about as time has passed

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely ladies at The Broke and the Bookish. Every Tuesday we create a list inspired by a particular topic! This week is about books we feel different about as time has passed, but I'm making it genres I feel different about as time has passed instead. I thought I'd make this a more interesting post so instead of naming some books, I'm talking about genres! I've been wanting to do something like this for a while and the opportunity presented itself.EROTICALet's just start with erotica. I'd never thought I was going to read it, let alone enjoy it. It's still very much out of my comfort zone, but I'm beginning to enjoy it. I had a hard time with sex scenes in books until, well now, and I think it has very much to do with my age! At 19 I feel like it isn't exactly 'wrong' to read books with sex in it, and I definitely think it's something you should wait to delve into until you're ready. I read it once in a while but I definitely prefer my mature YA and NA books for now! So, I've gone from a 'never' to a 'every once in a while'. Mature YA and NA was, and is, the perfect way to ease myself into it though. I mean, I love Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover and I really enjoyed Forget You by Jennifer Echols and both books have sex scenes. I feel like I've grown! HISTORICAL FICTIONI love the idea of historical fiction, like I've talked about many times, but I don't really enjoy historical fiction. I have a good deal of HF on my shelves but I usually shy away from them. Honestly I'm afraid I'll get disappointed, because I usually am. Although, I've bought All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer, Red Queen and The Other Boleyn by Philippa Gregory, all the Edward Rutherford novels (which is currently translated into Danish) and a few others. I've even tried reading The Book Thief - two times and I've never gotten more than halfway through and even that has been a struggle. So, I still read it once in a while but I don't think it's my genre. NONFICTIONI'd never thought I'd be a reader of nonfiction - but I actually love it. I don't really read biographies, and I fear I never will, but I like memoirs. The Happiness Project is one of my all time favorite books, A Room of One's Own is high on the list as well! I also just read Som i et spejl which is a Danish book (not translated, yet) about 7 important female characters in literature. I've even received the Danish edition of Popular by Maya van Wagenen for review and I'm really looking forward to it! As long as it's memoirs and about literature, I guess I like it. CLASSICSAnother genre I thought I wouldn't enjoy. I'm still not totally into it, since I have a hard time finding ones I need to read. I have all of Austen's works though and a bunch of the Wordsworth editions, a massive copy of Les Mis and many others. I was unfortunately disappointed by both A Clockwork Orange and 1984 which was the ones I wanted to read with a passion! So, my real problem is a fear of disappointment!

YA
In 2012 I didn't think about the fact that books were divided into YA, childrens and adult. I knew where the YA books where at the library but I never thought about it. Then after discovering booktube and bookblogging in 2013 I became obsessed with YA and read mainly that. Now, I still enjoy it, but it's far from the only thing I read.
I feel different about YA know because, well, I am a bit older, but I also feel like we read about the same tropes all the time. There's not much new in YA. Sometimes I even have a hard time distinguishing books e.g. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven and My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga.

NA
Just like erotica there was a time where I said 'never' but around my 17th or 18th birthday I thought I might as well try a book or two and well, The Edge of Never by J.A. Redmerski is still one of my favorite books. I've also just read Ugly Love which was so, so good and I have Losing it on my TBR shelf!
I fear that I'll come across some of those books that are written solely for the sex scenes, but I feel like it's a bigger problem in erotica and not new adult. The main reason I enjoy new adult though, is the fact that the characters are older, more my age and I can relate to them. I have a hard time relating to YA characters at this point.

SHORT STORIES AND NOVELLAS
I was unsure whether to include this or not, but it is a writing genre, so why not?
I've always had a hard time with short stories and novellas, but I'm really starting to enjoy them! I have Kindred Spirits on my shelf, I have a collection of Fay Weldon's short stories waiting to be read and reviewed, I've just bought a short story collection from Penguin and I actually own a bunch of anthologies!
When I need a book I can jump in and out of, I think an anthology is great. You can read a story here and a story there! I've been disappointed in the past though, but I'm trying to pick 'better' - e.g. find ones I actually want to read.